Quilotoa Lake and Chugchilan

The town of Quilotoa is tiny, and lies roughly 2 hours away from Latacunga by bus. If you head to the main bus station in Latacunga, there are multiple companies that embark on the journey. However the earliest buses from Latacunga we could find to anywhere on the Quilotoa Loop disembarked at 10:30. That made it difficult to catch a bus somewhere before commencing a full day of hiking.The journey to Quilotoa follows a winding road through beautiful green farm land. Time passes by fairly quickly when you’re surrounded by hundreds of green patchwork covered hill sides.

Upon arriving in Quilotoa we found a hostel and dropped our stuff. For only $10 we were rewarded with a double bed each, hot water and a fireplace in our room. Perfect! And that was the expensive option, as the hostel we stayed in had a $5 room too. The hostel was located on the right hand side of the road up towards the lake, just after you pass the entry station where you need to pay $2 to enter the park. After a bite to eat, we headed for the crater, a mere 300m from the entrance of town.

On the first afternoon we decided we’d embark on the trek around the lake. It’s 12 km long and said to take anywhere from 5 to 6 hours as it is very up and down, and is situated at an altitude of almost 4000m.

The walk was beautiful! The lake is incredible and the colour is so fantastically vibrant it doesn’t feel real. We ended up finishing the loop around the crater just as it was getting dark and cold. The walk took us just under 4 hours which we were very happy with, considering our lack of hiking boots and being at sea level only a week before. I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking for this one, it was amazing.

Also on a side note, the wind here can be brutal and freezing, so make sure you pack a few layers! A friend we were with (Hi Ness!) thought shorts and a t-shirt would be sufficient.. To put it into perspective I had on leggings, a singlet, a long sleeve tee, a polar fleece jacket, a down jacket and a beanie and still felt the cold! However being from Australia does mean we’re a little bit soft when it comes to cold weather.

That night we had wood fired pizza and hit bed at around 8:30pm. The sleep was well needed. The next day we headed back to the lake, and this time walked down to the water. It’s a 30 or so minute walk down and 45 – 60min back up depending on your pace (and how acclimatised you are to that pesky altitude). We took a few more snaps and played around with a couple of friendly local pooches that followed us all morning before heading back to the hostel for some breakfast. After that it was on to our next stop, the small town of Chugchilan 11 or so kilometres away.

Now its important to note here that we did not have a map, and resultantly it wasn’t super obvious where to go… but nonetheless we made it, and the scenery was again incredible. There are several ways to get there, via road, dirt road, or a small zigzagging goat trail cut into the side of the volcano that dips all the way down to a river at the bottom of the valley, crosses it via a bridge made from a pile of eucalyptus logs and then works back up towards Chugchilan.Needless to say we took the goat/donkey trail, and again I’ll let photos do the talking.

The next day we grabbed a lift back to Quilotoa and then a bus back to Latacunga. The Lake was incredible and the scenery between the two towns were beautiful. If you’ve got the time we highly recommend at least doing a day trip to the lake and walking the 12km’s around it.We’ve heard of people spending weeks trekking around and between the small towns on the “Quilotoa Loop” and if you have more time the world is your oyster. Buses between towns and back to Latacunga however are pretty irregular (once per day or less), and some towns we later found out have no buses at all. We also found it hard to find any accurate information on bus schedules anywhere online or in Latacunga, so a recommendation from us would be if you have a deadline (flight, etc) to reach shortly after exploring Quilotoa, then leave yourself a day or two buffer to make sure you don’t end up stranded, or have to pay a local an arm and a leg for a lift the whole way back to Latacunga.